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FunTranscript
00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - What film or series lit your fuse
00:13 and made you have to tell stories on screen?
00:16 - I don't know if you're familiar with my work,
00:22 if you are at all, it's probably gonna come as no surprise
00:27 that it's "Goodfellas."
00:29 I remember being in the theater in that opening shot
00:33 where they're hearing something bumping around the car
00:36 and thinking like, "What is that noise?"
00:38 And it just seems, it's like such an average moment,
00:41 such a quiet, nothing moment.
00:43 And they pull over to inspect it and suddenly they,
00:46 you know, the violence of that moment
00:47 when the trunk opens up and you push in and freeze
00:50 and it's like, that's when I knew I was gonna be a gangster.
00:53 It just grabs you by the throat, like immediately.
00:57 And the way that that movie played,
01:00 the way that the euphoria in it, just the journey of it
01:04 through that first half of the film,
01:07 the staccato cuts, the changing of the voiceover
01:10 from our main narrator to suddenly going to his wife
01:13 in a makeup scene with all the girls,
01:16 just the lack of boundaries and the experimentation
01:18 and the jump cuts that were happening,
01:20 the triple cuts that would happen.
01:22 There was so much going on in that film
01:24 that was literally just euphoric.
01:27 For me, and the indulgence in scenes
01:31 that necessarily weren't plot-driven at times,
01:34 you know, just you get this sense of this world
01:37 in such a visceral way, the wedding with the envelopes
01:40 and, you know, there's just so much going on
01:43 that it's always been a touchstone for me.
01:46 It's like to try and get that kind of energy
01:47 and that euphoria and that inventiveness with the camera,
01:51 but also with characters that are so grounded in reality
01:56 and so authentic in their performances.
01:59 He's obviously invented ways to use music
02:02 where it's juxtaposing against the scene.
02:04 You can have an incredibly violent scene
02:06 and then some beautiful big band piece of score against it
02:09 that just feels at odds with what's happening
02:11 and it gives you a very complicated emotional response.
02:14 The narration, again, which is often at odds
02:17 with what you're seeing, or a logic that seems
02:20 with so much conviction that is inherently flawed,
02:25 but somehow you're nodding along with it.
02:28 All these devices, and interestingly, you know,
02:30 he's kind of got the whole kitchen sink in there
02:32 to the point that the only time Ray stops
02:34 and breaks the fourth wall is at the end of the film
02:37 in the courtroom scene, and up until that point,
02:40 it's been a voiceover, and then suddenly he's talking to us.
02:43 So it just constantly kept you off guard.
02:47 - Yes, yeah, and then at the end,
02:49 when he picks up the paper in the driveway,
02:51 and he's, what did he call himself, a schnook?
02:54 - He's an average guy, an average Joe, I think.
02:58 And then obviously the use of music,
03:01 it was interesting that when I did do "I, Tanya,"
03:04 I was like, "Can I use this much music in a movie?"
03:08 And I went back and I looked at "Goodfellas"
03:10 and realized the first hour of "Goodfellas,"
03:13 it does not stop playing music.
03:15 There's no score.
03:16 It's song after song after song.
03:18 And it surprised me how much
03:21 that the audience could sustain in that sense.
03:24 And so that sort of gave me the confidence there as well.
03:28 - Is there anybody better at the needle drops
03:30 than Marty Scorsese?
03:31 - I can't, no, honestly, I can't think of anybody
03:35 that comes close.
03:36 And it's like, it is that surprise,
03:39 that juxtaposition of what you're seeing
03:41 and what you're hearing, that's inspired me since then.
03:45 It's always something I've been looking for,
03:47 is like, how is the music elevating the moment
03:49 as opposed to just complimenting it?
03:51 And I think he was at the forefront of that.
03:54 - When you were on your way up,
03:56 making your way as a filmmaker,
03:59 what movie or series came along, you watched it,
04:03 and it was so good, it made you think,
04:05 what am I doing here?
04:07 Can I ever rise to this level?
04:10 - It's interesting.
04:13 It was a very slow evolution for me to become a filmmaker.
04:19 I kept moving my goalposts.
04:21 So it was never quite at the point
04:25 where I was thinking about it too much,
04:26 but I do remember when I did see "Pulp Fiction,"
04:28 which again, was in a theater,
04:30 the structure of that film was mind boggling.
04:35 It's like, you're trying to wrap your head around,
04:37 starting in the middle of the film and going back,
04:38 and how you're gonna get back to these guys
04:40 in their board shorts and their,
04:42 like the t-shirts and these outfits,
04:45 and just the structure of that.
04:47 And again, the free form of conversations
04:51 that you'd never expect that you're gonna be listening to,
04:53 or you never have time for in plot-driven movies,
04:56 where they're explaining what a cheese royale is in a scene,
04:59 or you should never give your mother a foot rub.
05:01 It's like these, obviously,
05:03 we all know how brilliant Quentin is with dialogue,
05:06 but that was the first time we really experienced it,
05:09 in its full force.
05:12 And he'd done "Reservoir Dogs" before that,
05:15 which was an amazing film,
05:16 but this one took it to another level.
05:19 And the complexity of that,
05:22 and the inventiveness and the freshness of that film,
05:26 was both exhilarating, kind of shocking.
05:28 It's like, it was playing on a different stratosphere for me.
05:31 Maybe this is personality fault or something,
05:35 but that inspires me.
05:38 That's what motivates me,
05:40 that when you see something like that,
05:41 that that's sort of setting the goalposts of like,
05:44 I wanna be able to do something like that,
05:46 and how do I figure that out?
05:48 And how do I do it?
05:50 It's sort of been my driving force along the way.
05:53 And it's been, I started out in advertising,
05:58 and I saw the director shooting the commercials,
06:01 and I was like, I wanna be that guy.
06:02 And then I started working on
06:04 how to be a commercial director.
06:06 And then I got to do that,
06:07 and then I started realizing,
06:09 you know what, actually, I wanna do features.
06:11 And then say, how do I figure out how to do features?
06:13 And spent five years working on that.
06:16 And so it just sort of, it kept evolving.
06:18 And that sort of, so it wasn't like a,
06:23 it wasn't something that struck me,
06:25 you know, coming from Australia,
06:26 growing up on the beach,
06:27 and it's not obviously a huge film industry
06:30 in the Northern beaches of Sydney.
06:32 It wasn't something that was on my radar
06:34 until I was in my mid-20s.
06:36 - So whether it was the success of something you did,
06:40 or approval from someone whose opinion
06:42 really mattered to you,
06:44 what first gave you the confidence
06:46 that in fact you could do this,
06:48 and you did belong?
06:50 - It was, it's interesting,
06:53 'cause it's like,
06:54 the one thing I'm starting to realize in my filmography,
06:57 that they're always outsiders.
07:00 So I never really feel like I belong,
07:03 in that sense, even though I am,
07:05 you know, fairly entrenched in the film community
07:08 at this point.
07:09 But I had this crazy start to my film career,
07:13 which was, I got to do Mr. Woodcock,
07:16 where I thought I knew what I was doing,
07:19 and found out in no uncertain terms, I didn't.
07:24 And it was, there was a lot of failure
07:26 in that film for me.
07:27 It's like on every level,
07:28 on how to deal with the studio,
07:29 and dealing with the actors,
07:30 the communication, the lack of collaboration.
07:34 There's so many things that I failed with on that film.
07:37 And just out of sheer luck,
07:41 it's like I'd had Lars and the real girl for five years,
07:43 but couldn't get it made.
07:44 And I managed to set it up
07:46 before anybody saw Mr. Woodcock,
07:48 and before it became like, you know,
07:50 I ended up being taken off Mr. Woodcock and posed.
07:52 And there is, as I say,
07:54 I was saying to some students the other day,
07:56 you learn so much more from your failures
07:58 than your successes.
08:00 And I was actually, in hindsight,
08:03 so grateful to have gone through that process,
08:05 'cause I don't think I would ever have been able
08:06 to make Lars, had I not been so severely humbled
08:11 through that first film.
08:12 And when I sat down to do Lars,
08:14 I turned to my DP and I said,
08:16 "Let's pretend I've never made a movie before.
08:18 What would you recommend?"
08:20 And, you know, it was like,
08:21 "Let's not do masters.
08:22 Let's, you know, like shot list the whole thing,
08:25 sit by the camera so you're close to the..."
08:27 There were all these tools that I was giving.
08:28 I started learning how to collaborate.
08:30 And the same with Ryan as an actor.
08:33 The first movie I did, I was like,
08:34 "All right, so you're gonna stand here.
08:35 You're gonna stand here.
08:36 This is what we're doing."
08:37 I thought I had to show like I knew what I was doing
08:39 as a director, even though I clearly had no idea.
08:42 And it didn't work.
08:44 And so the second film, I remember, you know,
08:46 with Ryan and he was talking one day,
08:48 we were on the phone in prep
08:49 and he had all these ideas about his character
08:53 and he wanted to wear like a mechanic suit
08:54 and ride a bike in the snow and all of these things.
08:57 And I hung up and I walked out back
09:00 and my wife was in the garden.
09:01 She's like, "How'd it go?"
09:02 And it's like, "Well, he wants to do this.
09:03 And he wants to do that.
09:04 And he wants to wear a suit and ride a bike."
09:06 And she was like, "Why not?"
09:09 And it was sort of this aha moment of like,
09:12 yeah, it's like, I guess, why not?
09:14 It's like, you've got to like be open and collaborate.
09:17 And the collaboration we had on that movie,
09:20 the amount that he bought to it in so many ways,
09:23 it's like one being the first scene he shot with Bianca,
09:27 who's the doll in the film.
09:29 He came up to me right before we shot it.
09:31 And so it's like seventh day of shooting.
09:33 And he said, "Hey, I feel like I should be talking to her.
09:35 If I was going on a date
09:36 and she was gonna meet my friends
09:38 and try and make her feel comfortable."
09:39 I'm like, "Go for it."
09:40 And he improvised this whole thing
09:42 about watching documentaries
09:43 and trying to remember people's names.
09:45 They like it if you remember their names.
09:47 And I came up to him afterwards.
09:48 I said, "Talk to her as much as you want."
09:50 And all, every line in the movie
09:53 when he's talking to Bianca is improvised.
09:55 You know, it's like just being able to
09:57 bring those opportunities to it.
09:59 So I learned so much on that film.
10:02 And that was the film that felt truly a part of who I am.
10:06 Like that was a film where I feel like I found my voice.
10:09 I then lost it along the way on various things,
10:12 but that one I felt was very close to my heart
10:15 and was an incredible experience.
10:19 The crazy thing that happened from that movie that came out,
10:22 Steven Spielberg saw it
10:24 and he was doing "United States of Tara" with Diablo Cody.
10:27 And they asked me to direct it,
10:29 this television series with Tony Collette.
10:31 So I came in to meet the television guys
10:34 and talked to them for a little bit.
10:37 And they said, "If Steven has time,
10:38 he's going to pop by."
10:39 And I thought, "Yeah, sure.
10:40 I'm sure he has time to pop in
10:41 with everything he's got going on."
10:43 And then they got a call and they say,
10:45 "Oh, he wants you to go over to his office."
10:47 And suddenly I'm sitting in his office,
10:49 meeting him for the first time.
10:51 And he's talking about how much he enjoyed the film.
10:54 And out of the blue, he goes,
10:55 "So how are you going to shoot this television show?"
10:58 And I was on the spot having to pitch my directorial vision
11:02 to him, which was an incredibly scary,
11:05 intimidating moment that I had no prep for.
11:08 And I found myself starting to tell him my version
11:12 of how I would direct it,
11:13 and kind of having to double down and commit to it
11:16 because you have to.
11:17 And at the end of it, he said, "It sounds great,
11:21 but you got to do coverage."
11:22 But he was lovely.
11:24 And then through that whole process, he was so supportive
11:27 and such like a filmmaker's companion.
11:31 Like he was never felt like a,
11:33 it was such a mentor in a way.
11:35 And that was, you know, that,
11:37 obviously I went on through United States of Taro with that,
11:40 and then we did "Fright Night" together.
11:41 And that was an incredible experience.
11:44 - What would you say was the biggest obstacle
11:46 that you had to overcome to allow you to turn projects
11:50 that influenced you into your own language?
11:54 - You know, I'm very proud of the movies I've done,
11:57 but I went through this odd phase.
12:00 I mean, it's hard to get any kind of movie.
12:03 And it's like, I've been asked in the past,
12:04 like you have such a diverse range of films and why is that?
12:07 And honestly, it's just because sometimes
12:09 that's all you get off it.
12:11 And I went through this phase of making films
12:14 where I was trying to make what I thought
12:15 the audience wanted, like what felt like a film,
12:18 that felt like, you know, it was well executed
12:21 and beautiful cinematography and so forth.
12:24 And all the way up to "The Finest Hours,"
12:26 which is a very like well-executed film,
12:29 but it's not specific to me.
12:33 You know, it's like there's something in my tonality
12:35 that I love to do this dance with comedy and humor.
12:39 And it's like, somebody once said to me,
12:41 "If you're doing a film that there's 10 other directors
12:44 that can do, why are you doing it?"
12:46 Anyway, that film came out, it wasn't that successful.
12:49 And I remember again, my wife is in the kitchen
12:51 and she's like, "I don't understand
12:53 why you're not making movies like Lars,"
12:55 which had been like seven or eight years at this point.
13:00 Serendipitously, then "I, Tonya" came along.
13:02 And with that, I thought,
13:05 I'm gonna go back to my roots.
13:06 I'm gonna make a movie that I wanna watch.
13:09 I'm gonna be fearless.
13:10 I don't know where it's gonna land with the general public.
13:13 I don't know what they'll think of it,
13:14 but it's just something that I am truly like believing in.
13:19 And I just went for it on "I, Tonya."
13:21 And that was the most gratifying experience
13:24 to actually have that resonate.
13:27 - You know, I think of "Dumb Money"
13:30 in a way that I do of "I, Tonya,"
13:33 where you take these, I wouldn't say ordinary people
13:37 because Tonya Harding certainly was a gifted skater,
13:41 but these people who are way above their station
13:45 and they do their best to hang on.
13:48 Tell me what burned in you to tell this story
13:52 that we'll see in "Dumb Money."
13:56 - There is this sense, I haven't quite figured it out yet.
14:00 I'm always attracted to the outsider, to the underdog.
14:03 It may have something to do with coming to this country
14:07 at 19 and going to school in New York
14:10 and not knowing anybody and sort of starting out,
14:14 feeling very much on the outside.
14:16 But there's something that I'm drawn to there.
14:19 And this is such an underdog story.
14:22 And it's also such a communal story.
14:26 And this sense that was happening through COVID,
14:30 I had this opportunity to talk about a time
14:32 that is very close to our hearts.
14:33 It was very intense.
14:34 It was an experience that I don't think
14:38 anybody has been through, obviously, in our lives.
14:41 And I think it recalibrated everything for everybody.
14:44 It was like putting life on pause
14:46 and people have come out of it with different priorities.
14:49 They've come out of it with a different relationship
14:52 between work and life.
14:54 And also what they want in terms of respect and to be heard.
14:58 And this community that came together
15:01 and is so frustrated because right now in the country,
15:04 the disparity wealth has never been larger.
15:08 And to be able to find a platform to talk about that
15:11 and have context for it, and it happened to be GameStop,
15:15 that was something I felt was really powerful.
15:17 And when the GameStop phenomenon was happening
15:21 and the sense that the system was rigged against them
15:23 and that there was something a little nefarious going on,
15:26 that outrage and that frustration
15:28 that I was feeling in real time,
15:30 like with my son was involved in it and trading in it,
15:34 that's something that I wanted to capture.
15:36 And that's something that I wanted to sort of fan
15:38 and activate in people, because it is happening right now.
15:41 It's happening with the strikes in Hollywood.
15:43 And it's like, you feel like
15:45 if you can get a community together
15:46 and they can have a strong voice, things can change.
15:49 And so just to keep that drive going was powerful for me.
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